Human Sacrifice - Peter Leeson

3.2 Kond Sacri…ce
Kond communities sacri…ced humans. 15 Their victims were called meriahs. Konds purchased
these persons from meriah sellers called Doms (or Pans) who I discuss in Section 4. 16
principle meriahs could be persons of any age, sex, race, or caste. In practice they were
nearly always non-Konds. 17
“The meriah sacri…ce was an elaborate a¤air” (van den Bosch 2007: 214). It involved
rituals for preparing meriahs for immolation, rituals for the immolation itself, and rituals
following the immolation. Sacri…ce was “celebrated as a public oblation . . . both at social
festivals held periodically, and when special occasions demand[ed] extraordinary propitiations”(Macpherson
1865: 113).
Every community held at least one of these festivals every year.
In
Typically a single
meriah was sacri…ced at each festival. But this was a lower bound. Kond-country visitors
occasionally reported sacri…ces of upwards of 20 meriahs at a time (Selections from the
Government of India1854: 22). The general impression of British o¢ cers who visited Kond
country was that “the number of Meriahs annually immolated” was large— very large—
indeed, “far larger than could readily be credited”(Selections from the Government of India
1854: 28; see also, C.R. 1846a: 61). 18 “One thing is painfully certain, and that above
15 While human sacri…ce was a near-universal practice among the Konds, it wasn’t totally so. Within
Kond country there were several smaller areas in which human sacri…ce wasn’t practiced. In some of these
areas female infanticide existed. In the others neither sacri…ce nor infanticide existed. See, Selections of the
Government of India (1854: 54-55).
16 As I discuss below, Konds almost always purchased meriahs from these persons. However, in rare cases
Konds sold their children to other Konds as meriahs. Two circumstances seem to have given rise to such
an occurrence. First, the destitution of the Kond seller, who couldn’t survive without making the sale. And
second, the e¤orts of the British to suppress sacri…ce, which made it harder for Pan middlemen to operate,
in turn forcing Konds to purchase persons from the hills for sacri…cial purposes. See, C.R. (1848: 311).
17 They were also “generally in innocent childhood”(Macpherson 1843: 199; see also, Selections from the
Government of India 1854: 17).
18 As Macpherson lamented (1843: 180), “the number of sacri…ces in a Khond district depends on circumstances
so variable, that it is scarcely possible to form an estimate . . . of their annual average” (see also,
Campbell 1864: 267). But this didn’t o¢ cers from o¤ering estimates, which, unsurprisingly, vary greatly.
Campbell (1864: 268) attributed an estimate of 500 to Macpherson and himself o¤ered an estimate of 150.
A British survey o¢ cer “estimated the number of victims who are to be put to death in the forty Mootahs of
Ganjam alone, at 240; but these Mootahs,”he hastened to add, “are but a small part of the wide region over
which we know that this practice prevails”(Macpherson 1865: 151). Another British o¢ cer suggested that
“A sacri…ce is never o¤ered in any village oftener than once in 12 years” (Selections from the Government
of India 1854: 10). Perhaps the only communities he was aware of were composed of more than 12 villages.
In any event his statement isn’t supported by any other observers, who describe sacri…ce as very frequent.
As Boal (1997: 100) summarized it echoing Macpherson, while “the number of sacri…ces in a district were
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